Well, Barack Obama (the president I don’t like) was here in Ann Arbor for a speech today, and I didn’t go. I went out in the front yard and watched the high-tech helicopters for a little while, but the fuss bores me. Perhaps I am getting too old.
However, I have some young friends who are basically good people. Nice decent kids. Seriously; I would not say that if it weren’t true. And they were pumping the Obama appearance. Clearly, it made them feel proud.
Many people my age (and many younger) would dismiss these kids out of hand as “brainwashed” and would think they are scary. The thing is, I know them and they are not scary. They are quite normal, and a product of their time. I am not only old enough to be their grandfather, but I am also old enough to remember what it was like when I was their age, and on the left.
Yes, at their age, I was a self-proclaimed Marxist. A radical whose political thinking was grounded largely in adolescent rebellion.
So…. It occurred to me that while the kids today are also on the left as I was, they are:
1) not as far to the left; and
2) decidedly not rebellious.
The latter is a rather major point, for it distinguishes young lefties of today from young lefties of my day.
Any thoughts?
It occurs to me that people change their thinking as they mature, and that conformity with the beliefs of one’s elders constitutes a form of conservatism.
So if Churchill’s famously mis-attributed observation was correct, what are the implications?
Comments
9 responses to “What Churchill never said…”
You’re completely off-base, Eric. Read William Strauss and Neil Howe for a pretty darn good analysis of the difference between a Prophet generation (that’s you) and a Hero generation (that’s your young friends).
Helpful hint: the children of your young friends will give them as much trouble as you gave your parents. If you’re feeling particularly grandfatherly, you might warn them to expect as much–though they probably won’t listen.
I dunno…
I’m *mumble* old. I grew up in a very liberal family, (WBAI playing in the house continuously; enough Pete Seegar and Paul Robeson to gag on) in a liberal neighborhood, with very liberal teachers. By the time I was 18 I’d seen enough of it. Reading a lot of authors like Heinlein and Poul Anderson also helped.
The grandchildren can still do a lot of damage until they grow up. We are now living the SDS dream, the dream of your youth.
More importantly, what makes you think the grandchildren and their desires will be relevant 20 or 30 years from now? We are undergoing population replacement, and the concerns of your grandchildren (whatever they might be in the future) are not the same as those of the immigrants.
It is not just that Mexican and Third World immigrants will not be able to maintain our high-tech culture. They bring their own cultures and will impose them. That’s what our progressives don’t understand.
Large parts of our culture will disappear, and many current concerns will become quaint curiosities to the colonists. Did the Spaniards care about Aztec social policy? Sorry blacks, Mexicans despise you and are taking aways your jobs and homes. Sorry NATO, WTO, IMF, UN et al., that was a white European thingy.
Mexican immigration to the US, like Moslem immigration to the EU, will nullify much of if not all of the progressive (white and Jewish) agenda. The US immigration policy is intensely anti-black, andy maybe deliberately so. Has our Ruling Class abandoned ournative blacks? Looks like. The EU immigration policy is anti-Semitic in the extreme. The few Jews remaining in Europe will be forced to emigrate. At least they have places to go, our native blacks don’t.
The coming world will be very different from what we had and have, and whites, especially progressive whites and Jews in particular, won’t like it.
Neil, I don’t see how it is “off base” to raise such questions or to contrast these generations. I was contrasting the conformity of today’s leftists with the rebellion of those in my generation, and asked about the implications to a much-quoted maxim:
“Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.”
Whether the character of today’s young liberals is psychologically conservative strikes me as worthy of consideration. Dismissing them as merely “brainwashed” is, I think, a bit shortsighted.
I have tenant turn over every two-to-five years; invariably new tenants are 25 to 30 years old. All young professionals with advanced degrees.
And all vote Democrat. They’re smart, educated, and vote Democrat. They’re inculcated throughout their schooling to vote Democrat. But I have a feeling that by the time they’re 35 or 40 and start to pay some serious taxes – property in addition to income – they’ll look for an alternative. The libertarian-leaning side of the GOP might offer them an alternative.
I watched my nephew grow up and do all the non-conforming cool things I did when I was in HS in the ’70’s.
When he died his hair green and started hanging around with Iraq war protesters, I thought all was lost.
I asked him what had happened to him one family gathering, why the green hair.”It’s great for getting the hippy chicks,” he replied.
Youth is mainly dumb and hormone-driven. Some youngsters, like our current crop of “leaders”, were so expertly indoctrinated in their “faith”, that they either believe it with all their hearts, or have figured out how to use it to “get the hippy chicks”; ie: MONEY. POWER.
The “true believers” are the ones who will grow out of it eventually. The “green haired guys” are the ones who keep it going. Cuz hippy chicks are easy. Get it?
Raise the voting age to 47 1/2 (my age of course 🙂
Eric,
Sorry, perhaps “off-base” was not a good choice of words. My point is that Churchill’s statement does not really apply to this generation in the same way it applied to his and yours. Think about the WW2 generation–were they rebellious in their youth? No, but their mothers were the Suffragettes and WCTU, and their fathers were the Anarchists and Wobblies.
Actually, it seems likely to me that Churchill quote is so popular among Boomers because it didn’t really apply to their parents.
churchill put gandhi in jail and support racist south africa. I was around back in the 50′ and 60’s I saw what was going on. The treatment of the poor and non-whites.